Merged Strict biological definitions of male/female

[Paul2]

Well now it's a bit late to change the thread title to "Strict actuarial definitions..."

My guess is that at least some of the sources of definitions that Steers has offered may not have fully considered the subtlety of defining male/female as phenotypes organized around the production of gametes as distinct from actually currently producing them.

 

[smartcooky]

Yes, there are three categories there. But two of them are included within the category "religion" -- which makes religion itself into a binary category. People outside that binary are "religion-less".

"Religion" and "religion-less" themselves comprise two members of a binary category. But that doesn't mean that each of those subcategories can't be binaries, trinaries, or a whole spectrum of subcategories.

Fail. That is not how categories work.

In this context, "Religion" is a subject, not an object. This is yet another example that indicates your lack of English comprehension

 

[Steersman]

There is no memo. Read my lips: there is no memo.

You seem rather overly "literal". Though, thankfully, not entirely so if you can quote Shakespeare.

But kinda think the Oxford Dictionary of Biology -- along with other reputable sources I've quoted -- all qualify as that "memo", if not as Papal Encyclicals. Figuratively speaking, of course, for the overly literal in the crowd ...

But all of them say diddly-squat about the "organized around" claptrap that various scientific and philosophical illiterates are peddling.

In science, definitions are based on consensus, and if they are a lot of biologists who disagree with your idiosyncratic misinterpretation, that just goes to show that whatever consensus there happens to be isn't very strong. There are disagreements. That's how science works.

Hardly "idiosyncratic". "produces gametes" is NOT "maybe sometime in the distant future" or "sometime in ancient history". If that were the case then all of the biologists who've contributed to a fairly large corpus on sequential hermaphrodites would have been obliged to say clownfish were males AND females right from conception to death. Hint -- they didn't:

If the female dies, the male gains weight and BECOMES the female for that group. The largest non-breeding fish then sexually matures and BECOMES the male of the group.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sequential_hermaphroditism&oldid=890717544

Can't very well become a male or a female some substantial time after hatching if one was both from the point of conception.

Even if the definition you are promoting were to achieve consensus among biologists as the only technical definition of biological sex, it would still be almost entirely useless in any practical biological or medical research.

Maybe the light is dawning? But for a guy supposedly with a handle on a bit of physics you don't seem to have much of a clue about proxies and operational definitions:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_(statistics)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operational_definition

If it is likely to be somewhat difficult to determine if any given organism is producing gametes, and which type, then that only means using some proxy variables if that is justified -- depending on context ... But if one wanted to compare members of species which were actually producing those gametes -- maybe the objective is to find common genes and the proteins they express? -- then using such proxies are likely to be worse than useless.

The single common element across ALL anisogamous species is the presence of significant numbers of those in each species which are actually producing either large or small gametes. The presence of the mechanisms that do so is what reputable biologists take as the necessary and sufficient conditions to qualify those organisms as referents of the terms "female" and "male".

 

[Steersman]

Fail. That is not how categories work. ...

You clearly haven't a flaming clue how categories work.

And rather "obstinately" -- not to say "pigheadedly" -- refuse to make any efforts at all to rectify that rather sad deficiency ...

"Don't confuse me with facts, my mind is made up", amirite?

 

[hecd2]

But kinda think the Oxford Dictionary of Biology -- along with other reputable sources I've quoted -- all qualify as that "memo", if not as Papal Encyclicals. Figuratively speaking, of course, for the overly literal in the crowd ...

Nah. First of all, you are begging the question by defining "reputable" to be synonymous with "agrees with Steersman", and even then you are misinterpreting your sources.

Secondly, you are showing your abject ignorance of the conduct of science by suggesting that Dictionaries and Encyclopaedias of science are authoritative, They are not. They are entirely subject to the usage of working scientists.

The meaning of terms in science is no more and no less than the meaning assigned to those terms by working scientists. It is working scientists who decide and the dictionaries and encyclopaedias are, or should be, subservient. They cannot dictate the definitions of technical terms.

In this case there is some disagreement amongst professionals about the explicit and strict definition of male and female, but the fact is that the vast majority of biologists and medical professionals use the terms male and female in cases which you would idiosyncratically regard as oxymoronic. Within the biological sciences it is often necessary to distinguish between male and female organisms that are not currently producing gametes (you would erroneously regard that phrase as oxymoronic). The consensus is to call them male and female - there are male and female foetuses, male and female neonates, male and female geriatrics, and that is how they are referenced throughout the biological and medical literature. That's all that matters - working biologists have spoken and the philosophers and dictionaries and Steersman can go hang.

 

[Myriad]

Kinda think you're missing the point, intentionally or otherwise. To insurance brokers "female" means "likely to have certain driving patterns or mortality rates typical of the category which justifies particular insurance rates". It is immaterial to them her current reproductive abilities -- a potential "accident" of a different sort. "female" is then being used in a "nominal" sense, not an actual one:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nominal

Your wife is only "nominally" a female, even if she still exhibits traits that are more or less typical of the category.

I’m not missing your point, I’m rejecting it.

Even if your interpretation of a “strict biological definition” were an accurate reflection of actual usage in the conduct and discourse of biologists (while the actual biologists posting here have quite adequately demonstrated that it is not), why should anyone besides a strict biologist care? The strict biological definition of “cell” doesn’t prove my phone is full of cytoplasm. The strict biological definition of “organic” doesn’t mean you can buy benzene from a supermarket produce aisle. The strict biological definition of “insect” doesn’t make insecticides harmless to spiders. The strict biological definition of anything, where it differs from a conventional definition applied in law or commerce or social interaction in general or some other science like medical science, forensic science, or actuarial science, is of no import outside the practice of biological science.

I’m not a biologist. I don’t do any business with biologists. I don’t receive any bills from biologists. I do receive services from and pay bills to insurance companies, whose business records categorize my wife as female with no qualm or quibble or asterisk. I do receive services from and pay bills to doctors and other health care providers, whose records categorize my wife as female, with no qualm or quibble or asterisk. I do receive services from and pay bills to three different levels of government, whose records categorize my wife as female with no qualm or quibble or asterisk.

Even if your alternative characterization of my wife’s sex had the agreement of every biologist in the world (which I again assert that it does not, nowhere close), why should their view override the established usage by these established institutions as well as society at large? Definitions and categories aren’t objective facts that science can disprove. They’re human constructs that anrise out of human experience, and sometimes refined and altered by consensus. Scientists get a say in that discourse, not dictatorial power over it.

Is this an actual example of the “scientism” that woo peddlers are constantly baselessly accusing posters here of practicing? Do you truly claim that only scientists’ views should matter, or do matter?

 

[smartcooky]

Nah. First of all, you are begging the question by defining "reputable" to be synonymous with "agrees with Steersman", and even then you are misinterpreting your sources.

You should avoid using complicated language. People who don't understand what "context" means, and don't understand that the word "present" in the term "present simple tense" does not always mean immediately and only at this moment in time, have no chance of understanding concepts like "begging the question".

 

[Steersman]

My guess is that at least some of the sources of definitions that Steers has offered may not have fully considered the subtlety of defining male/female as phenotypes organized around the production of gametes as distinct from actually currently producing them.

"subtlety"?

More like biological and philosophical cluelessness. At least Emma Hilton had enough intellectual integrity & honesty to repudiate the claptrap that she, Heying, & Wright had had published in the UK Times, lo these many moons ago. [See the OP for details.]

Pray tell, with your vast knowledge of those topics, around the production of which type of gametes is a newly hatched clownfish "organized"?

They may eventually produce both types of gametes. By the schlock that you're touting, and that too many illiterates here are peddling as gospel truth, you would be forced to conclude that they are male AND female right from conception. Do you think reputable biologists describe them that way? (Hint: they don't.) See:

If the female dies, the male gains weight and BECOMES the female for that group. The largest non-breeding fish then sexually matures and BECOMES the male of the group.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sequential_hermaphroditism&oldid=890717544

Can't very well become a male or a female some substantial time after hatching if one was both from the point of conception.

 

[Steersman]

... They are entirely subject to the usage of working scientists. ...

The meaning of terms in science is no more and no less than the meaning assigned to those terms by working scientists. ....

... That's all that matters - working biologists have spoken and the philosophers and dictionaries and Steersman can go hang.

Wot a joke. You're blowing smoke ...

The definitions published in any number of reputable sources -- including the Oxford Dictionary of Biology -- are, apparently, more or less the creation Geoff Parker [FRS] some 50 years ago in a paper in the Journal of Theoretical Biology:

Professor Geoffrey Alan Parker FRS (born 24 May 1944) is an emeritus professor of biology at the University of Liverpool[1] and the 2008 recipient of the Darwin Medal. Parker has been called “the professional’s professional”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoff_Parker

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0022519372900070
https://academic.oup.com/molehr/article/20/12/1161/1062990

You clearly haven't a flaming clue what you're talking about.

 

[Paul2]

"subtlety"?

More like biological and philosophical cluelessness. At least Emma Hilton had enough intellectual integrity & honesty to repudiate the claptrap that she, Heying, & Wright had had published in the UK Times, lo these many moons ago. [See the OP for details.]

Pray tell, with your vast knowledge of those topics, around the production of which type of gametes is a newly hatched clownfish "organized"?

They may eventually produce both types of gametes. By the schlock that you're touting, and that too many illiterates here are peddling as gospel truth, you would be forced to conclude that they are male AND female right from conception. Do you think reputable biologists describe them that way? (Hint: they don't.) See:


https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sequential_hermaphroditism&oldid=890717544

Can't very well become a male or a female some substantial time after hatching if one was both from the point of conception.

The definition about phenotypes organized around one type of gamete can be usefully applied to mammals, as mammals are gonochoristic. For species like clownfish, modify the definition as needed or acknowledge exceptional cases (2-5%?).

 

[Steersman]

The definition about phenotypes organized around one type of gamete can be usefully applied to mammals, as mammals are gonochoristic. For species like clownfish, modify the definition as needed or acknowledge exceptional cases (2-5%?).

Kinda think you're missing a fundamental principle of science in general and of biology in particular:

Folk taxonomies are generated from social knowledge and are used in everyday speech. They are distinguished from scientific taxonomies that claim to be disembedded from social relations and thus more objective and universal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_taxonomy

The point of the standard biological definitions for the sexes is that they apply to ALL anisogamous species, NO exceptions. Something that evolutionary biologist (a practicing one for those keeping score, at least if they're able to count ...) and transwoman Joan Roughgarden emphasized in Paul Griffiths' paper:

PG: “But no general definition of sexes can rely on these features [chromosomes, sex organs, hormones] because, as Roughgarden puts it, ‘the criteria for classifying an organism as male or female have to work with worms to whales, with red seaweed to redwood trees.’ ....”

https://philarchive.org/rec/GRIWAB-2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Roughgarden

But I kind think there's a "mistranslation" in "gonochorism":

Terminology:
The term is derived from Greek gone 'generation' + chorizein 'to separate'.[6] The term gonochorism originally came from German Gonochorismus.[7]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonochorism

See a bit of etymology:

2. chor- "separate" as in gonochorism "the biological development of separate sexes,"

https://www.uvm.edu/~jbailly/courses/clas22/lessons/GreekLesson11.html

There is absolutely nothing in either of those that justifies the previous claim from Wikipedia that "each individual organism is either male or female". Which very much depends on how one defines "male" and "female" in the first place. All they're saying, in effect, is that all sexed individual organisms -- i.e., those with a sex -- are either male or female.

ETA: You might also note that ovotestis, while rare but not unheard of in humans, are found in mice and moles:

An ovotestis is a gonad with both testicular and ovarian aspects. In humans, ovotestes are an infrequent anatomical variation associated with gonadal dysgenesis. ... The only mammals where ovotestes are not symptomatic of a disorder are moles, wherein females possess ovotestes along with a masculinized clitoris. .... In mice, ovotestes are structured such that the central region is testicular tissue while the poles both contain ovarian tissue.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovotestis

So mice and moles and some humans aren't "organized around producing either type of gamete". Though maybe moot in the case of mice and moles -- maybe they can subsequently develop into either like clownfish.

But there goes your "usefully applied" ...

 

[hecd2]

The definitions published in any number of reputable sources -- including the Oxford Dictionary of Biology -- are, apparently, more or less the creation Geoff Parker [FRS] some 50 years ago in a paper in the Journal of Theoretical Biology:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoff_Parker

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0022519372900070
https://academic.oup.com/molehr/article/20/12/1161/1062990

You clearly haven't a flaming clue what you're talking about.

Nah, you're the one who is abysmally ignorant about how science is actually conducted, and here you are making my point for me. What makes you think that a definition provided by a single biologist, however distinguished, dating from 50 years ago trumps the definitions of the working community of biologists today. It doesn't and it can't. There are no infallible prophets nor are there any holy books in science.

Moreover the papers to which you link and which include Parker as an author do not in any way support your silly proposition - rather the contrary.

You'd probably be more comfortable, and certainly less prone to schoolboy error, arguing about matters of religion with religious exegetes than you are on a science forum.

 

[Paul2]

Kinda think you're missing a fundamental principle of science in general and of biology in particular:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_taxonomy

The point of the standard biological definitions for the sexes is that they apply to ALL anisogamous species, NO exceptions. Something that evolutionary biologist (a practicing one for those keeping score, at least if they're able to count ...) and transwoman Joan Roughgarden emphasized in Paul Griffiths' paper:


https://philarchive.org/rec/GRIWAB-2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Roughgarden

But I kind think there's a "mistranslation" in "gonochorism":


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonochorism

See a bit of etymology:


https://www.uvm.edu/~jbailly/courses/clas22/lessons/GreekLesson11.html

There is absolutely nothing in either of those that justifies the previous claim from Wikipedia that "each individual organism is either male or female". Which very much depends on how one defines "male" and "female" in the first place. All they're saying, in effect, is that all sexed individual organisms -- i.e., those with a sex -- are either male or female.

ETA: You might also note that ovotestis, while rare but not unheard of in humans, are found in mice and moles:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovotestis

So mice and moles and some humans aren't "organized around producing either type of gamete". Though maybe moot in the case of mice and moles -- maybe they can subsequently develop into either like clownfish.

But there goes your "usefully applied" ...

Steers, is this a fair summary of your approach?

• The definition of the sexes has to apply to all anisogamous species.
  
• The sexes cannot be defined as the phenotypes organized around the production of one of the two gametes because that does not accommodate hermaphroditic species (2-5% of non-mammalian species).
  
• Defining sex by incorporating the idea of actually producing one of the two gametes accommodates those hermaphroditic species.
  
• Such a definition of sex then must apply to mammalian species, even though they are not hermaphroditic.

 

[Steersman]

Steers, is this a fair summary of your approach?

• The definition of the sexes has to apply to all anisogamous species.
  
• The sexes cannot be defined as the phenotypes organized around the production of one of the two gametes because that does not accommodate hermaphroditic species (2-5% of non-mammalian species).
  
• Defining sex by incorporating the idea of actually producing one of the two gametes accommodates those hermaphroditic species.
  
• Such a definition of sex then must apply to mammalian species, even though they are not hermaphroditic.

Yep, at least to a first approximation. You really might try reading Griffiths' paper, particularly the bits about crocodiles and bees:

https://philarchive.org/rec/GRIWAB-2

In the former case, crocodiles develop into males or females depending on the temperature the eggs are incubated at. They're not male or female from conception because at that point they're not producing either type of gamete, and can eventually produce one or the other.

In the latter case, most of the worker bees have the female genotype, but they're sterile, they can't produce any ova. And are therefore sexless. It's not the genotype, and not the phenotypes -- apart from the ones that produce gametes:

Griffiths:

Juveniles are only one of several cases where an organism cannot produce viable gametes. Eusocial insects such as ants, bees and wasps have a genetic sex-determination system. Some individuals with the ‘female’ genotype develop into egg-laying queens. But most individuals with that genotype develop into non-reproductive workers. In ant species with complex caste structures individuals with the ‘female’ genotype can develop down several different developmental pathways, becoming queens, soldiers or different kinds of worker.

The actual production of different gametes is the trait or property that is present in the greatest number of species and which justifies its "pride of place" as the defining criteria.

It's not just the hermaphrodites, sequential and otherwise, that are the issue. And probably many species other than ants, bees, and crocodiles that also justify the standard biological definitions.

 

[Steersman]

I’m not missing your point, I’m rejecting it.

On no evidence ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitchens's_razor

Even if your interpretation of a “strict biological definition” were an accurate reflection of actual usage in the conduct and discourse of biologists (while the actual biologists posting here have quite adequately demonstrated that it is not), why should anyone besides a strict biologist care?

Some "actual biologists" claim that sex is a spectrum. The issue is the controversy over which definitions qualify as trump. Which can only be adjudicated on the basis of going back to first principles, in understanding the reasons for the different ones. Don't see that your "biologists" have made any sort of a credible case for theirs.

As for "caring", that is more or less the point. Various transloonie nutcases are bound and determined to bastardize and corrupt the biological definitions for political purposes. Which too many here are more or less following suit on.

If people -- including various so-called biologists -- want to use folk-biology definitions then I guess they're entitled to do so. But if they do then I don't think they have much of a leg to stand on when people like "Ms." Tickle use the same ones to claim access to places like women's sports, toilets, and social media applications:

Bromwich: "Roxanne Tickle was of the male sex at the time of birth, but is now recognised ... as being of the female sex. This followed from, and was predicated on, sexual reassignment surgery, being the term used in the Qld BDM Registration Act, which will be used in these reasons."

https://www.judgments.fedcourt.gov.au/judgments/Judgments/fca/single/2024/2024fca0960

You can't have your cake and eat it too.

Even if your alternative characterization of my wife’s sex had the agreement of every biologist in the world (which I again assert that it does not, nowhere close), why should their view override the established usage by these established institutions as well as society at large? Definitions and categories aren’t objective facts that science can disprove. They’re human constructs that arise out of human experience, and sometimes refined and altered by consensus. Scientists get a say in that discourse, not dictatorial power over it.

Yes, I quite agree with you that "definitions and categories aren't objective facts". But some definitions are more useful than others. The standard biological definitions are more or less essential to all of biology, at least outside the backwaters peopled by various scientific illiterates, grifters, and charlatans -- "scientism-ists", the lot of them.

 

[Steersman]

Nah, you're the one who is abysmally ignorant about how science is actually conducted ...

LoL, as they say. You've given zero evidence that have even a clue "how science is actually conducted". Particularly biology.

What makes you think that a definition provided by a single biologist, however distinguished, dating from 50 years ago trumps the definitions of the working community of biologists today?

Maybe the fact that it's published in reputable biological dictionaries and journals? Pray tell, where are those from the people you're apparently championing? "scientism-ists", the lot by the look of it.

There are no infallible prophets nor are there any holy books in science.

Further evidence of that cluelessness of yours. You might try reading this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stipulative_definition

Moreover the papers to which you link and which include Parker as an author do not in any way support your silly proposition - rather the contrary.
.

In your entirely unevidenced opinion. Which ain't worth diddly-squat.

But I don't think you want that there's any common definition for the sexes, particularly ones endorsed by mainstream biology and the journals seen as authoritative. You look to be solidly in the camp of the spectrumists -- making common cause with the transloonie nutcases, by intent or not.

You seem little more than a fellow-traveler with people like Beans Velocci -- the author of the clap trap in Cell magazine, clearly talking out of the brown hole between his butt cheeks ... -- and like the authors of the BioRxiv paper that Colin Wright more or less took a strip off:

Their [Velocci's] work uses queer, trans, and feminist methods to interrogate how classification systems become regarded as biological truths, primarily in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century United States and its colonial and white supremacist context. Their first book project, tentatively titled Binary Logic, is a prehistory of cisness that looks at how sex emerged as a privileged [] way of sorting bodies not despite but because of its incoherence.

https://gsws.sas.upenn.edu/people/beans-velocci

The answer to the question “What is sex?” is, in both theory and practice, just about everything, and therefore also nearly nothing. This exercise demonstrates that sex is an incoherent category, one that has perhaps outlived its use.

https://www.cell.com/cell/abstract/S0092-8674(24)00122-3

Rather amused to note that Cell has now paywalled that article, probably out of embarrassment. One hopes so in any case.

And the BioRxiv paper is no better:

Finally, we conduct a meta-analysis of terms used to describe diversity in sexual phenotypes in the scientific literature to highlight how a more inclusive and expansive framework for multimodal sex can clarify, rather than cloud, studies of sexual diversity within and across species. We argue that such an expanded understanding of ‘sex’ better equips us to understand evolutionary processes on their own terms, and that as biologists it is incumbent upon us to push back against misunderstandings of the biology of sexual phenotypes that enact harm on marginalized communities [].

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.26.525769v1.full.pdf

Neither Velocci nor the BioRxiv authors are much concerned about "doing biology". Only about their "marginalized communities", about railing against "privileged ways of sorting bodies". A matter of identities, not of science.

Rather akin to the "dehumanizing" claptrap being peddled here of late -- "muh humanity".

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

So, wait, by now I'm curious how a biologist answers this: if I were to lop off a cat's dick and balls off, does he become a female cat? I mean you don't even need breast implants for the rest, since castrated male cats develop the same fat flap around the nipples (kinda the equivalent of boobs in humans) and many can even produce tiny amounts of milk.

And full disclosure, it's not even an animal cruelty scenario. Grandma's cat was castrated and eventually developed an urinary blockage, which is a surgical emergency. I don't know where that blockage was (or the quality of the veterinary surgeon that grandma found), but the poor guy lost his dick too in that operation.

So should granny have given him a female name now? (She did occasionally joke that he's a girl now.)

I mean, we couldn't ask the furry little fella how he identifies, since none of us was that fluent in meow, and probably their language isn't even complex enough for that

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Also, re: the idea "that sex is an incoherent category, one that has perhaps outlived its use."

I dunno, man, I might want to know if I'm milking the cow or the bull. I suspect that yoghurt from the latter might taste different

 

[Ron Obvious]

If I understand how it works around here, I'd like to put in a vote for a "A thread for Steersman to discuss things that catch his interest" thread to contain his monomaniacal drivel.

 

[Paul2]

Yep, at least to a first approximation. . . .

The necessity to define male/female as the actual producing in time of one of the two gametes ("temporal definition") is required by hermaphroditic species; if it weren't for hermaphroditic species, the "phenotype organized around 1 of the 2 gametes" definition would work, as it does for mammals anyway.

So, in order to have a single definition of male/female that applies to mammals and non-mammals, to hermaphroditic and gonochronistic species, the "actually producing in time" definition must be applied to mammals, even though they don't require such a definition.

The problem is that the temporal definition is then applied to all species even if they don't change their sex in time. That is what is sacrificed under the temporal definition.

ETA: The problem is exacerbated by the fact that only 2-5% of species are hermaphroditic. That's not an insignificant number, but it is certainly a small minority. On the other hand, definitions do need to account for all circumstance. On the other other hand, do they?